Matched by Ally Condie ★★★★☆

Questions and Choices

Fiction-YA-Dystopia

Reading level: Ages 12 and up  Gr 7 Up

369 pages

Published November 30th 2010

Matched #1

Literary awards:Teen Buckeye Book Award (2012), YALSA Awards for Best Fiction for Young Adults (2011), Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of the Year for Fiction (2010), Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2013)

The Society is infallible due to it being scientifically built upon data and numbers.  It always makes the right decisions for its members to have the most prosperous and fulfilling life or so Cassia has been taught.  But when she takes home her data card from her Matching ceremony to review the information on her ideal mate, Xander, Cassia sees another face, Ky.  Told to ignore the unusual glitch by the Officials Cassia, tries to focus on Xander, but once the possibility of choice is introduced Cassia can’t ignore what might have been.  Recklessly pursuing Ky, Cassia, starts questioning everything; the Society’s infallibility and their power over the members, where her heart belongs in spite of the data and whether she can continue down the life plan laid out for her or choose to create a new one?  All of these questions and the realization that she actually has a choice take her down a path she never dreamed of, but the real question is where she’ll end up.

I first picked up this book because of its intriguing cover; it caught my attention right away and drew me in.  And, though I found the premise very interesting it took me awhile to commit to reading it.  I always hesitate to read dystopias like Hunger Games and Divergent ( which was fantastic) so it came as no surprise it took me 6 weeks to choose to really start this one, but once I got started I had a hard time putting it down.

The writing has a nice relaxing almost hypnotic rhythm to it, with rich texture and lovely imagery, which I thoroughly enjoyed and coupled with the ability to keep my attention helped bump it up to four stars. There was a well fleshed explanation of the “Society” and enough justification of how it was meant to work that when it started to unravel you could understand how big the problems were.  Condie orchestrated everything in the plot and story very well.   She gave the right amount of insight into things happening outside of Cassia’s immediate world and balanced it with a great emotional journey not only for Cassia, but also the secondary characters of her family, Ky and Xander. 

Condie’s used Cassia to give a good understanding of the choices given up to the Society and how they are taught not to be thinkers, thus when she starts question things the danger she represented to everything the society stood for.  I enjoyed the different personalities in her family showing how the different people reacted to the rules.  Her father was an official who struggled to do what the Society said was the right thing, but broke the rules for the ones he loved.  Cassia’s mother was more rigid in her adherence to the rules choosing to protect her family by ignoring her conscience, but Cassia’s little brother was a rebel always flirting with trouble. 

Personally I’m not much into poetry, which is a fairly important element in this book, but I can understand in sterile world why people would crave beauty and the words would be so powerful.  Also while I like an element of romance for me it is never the main draw, but I think for someone who values it more they might get more enjoyment out of the story than I did.

I would like to address some reviewers’ opinion that this was just a rip off of The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I personally haven’t read The Giver yet, but it is on my list and I hope to get to it soon.  I just wanted to mention what some others have written so you can be prepared if you’ve already read The Giver.  As for my opinion of the issue I promise when I get around to it I will look at the two books for similarities and give my verdict on the review.

As for reading the next one, Crossed, I am kind of torn.  My curiosity pushes me to continue the story – even with terrible stories, which this one is not, I have a hard time giving up on them, but fortunately with age and a finite amount of reading time I am learning to be okay letting go- but the spirited dislike by reviewers on Goodreads for the second one is giving me pause.  Especially the comments about the huge amount of poetry in it.  For now I don’t have easy access to Crossed and have a lot of other books clamoring for my attention so the decision is made for me, but I’ll let you know if decide to pursue the book more vigorously in the future.

ISBN 0525423648 ISBN13: 9780525423645